A common mechanism in client-server communications is to employ an HTML document that is sent from the server to the client and displayed in a browser. The HTML document may include many input controls, such as checkboxes, that are to be optionally selected by a user at the client device. After manipulation by the user, the client may enumerate each input control, collecting the value of each control, and send back a list to the server, the list including the value of each control.
An HTML document may include a script, such as JavaScript, that is executed upon loading of the page by a browser. JavaScript provides a mechanism to enhance or customize functionality of a browser. Generally, operations performed by JavaScript are not as efficient as similar operations performed by a browser. In situations where execution speed is important, a designer may weigh tradeoffs between execution speed and the flexibility of JavaScript.
Web applications, such as an SQL server application, may reside on a server and interact with a client user by using HTML pages. For example, the SQL application may send to the client an HTML page with a set of checkboxes. The user may select various checkboxes, leaving some checked and some unchecked. The browser may enumerate each checkbox, and send to the server the status of each checkbox. The SQL application may use the status values in a variety of ways, such as building an SQL query.